


Red's DMV Intervention

by NamelesslyNightlock



Series: The DMV's FBI (and Sometimes Criminal) Encounters [1]
Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Gen, I have been informed this is not crack, Vending Machines are Dangerous, dmv adventures, not totally sure I believe that, references to Greek mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6324877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NamelesslyNightlock/pseuds/NamelesslyNightlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say more people are killed by vending machines than by sharks every year. They also say there are few things worse than physical torture. And of course, everything comes back to boredom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red's DMV Intervention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whimsicalwombat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalwombat/gifts).



> and for whimsicalwombat’s adoptive aunt: with vending machines, as requested.
> 
> Rated for language. See end for more warnings.

Waiting in the DMV had never been Red’s idea of a good time. The walls were grubby, the floors were atrocious, and the seats were most certainly not of the ergonomic kind. And the stench! Well, Red supposed he couldn’t really blame the people here for the smell of years old sweat and the strong tang of disinfectant - clearly, the place hadn’t seen a proper scrub in a long time, with the ‘cleaners’ preferring to throw down some bleach than dirty their knees on the linoleum. 

But to be totally honest, the smell and the people and the grime were not Red’s main grievances with the place. In fact, watching the people here was one of the only sources of entertainment; and that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? The foundations of Red’s issues with the place rested with the sheer weight of the total and utter boredom that pressed down on the room like a wet Persian carpet. The rest of the problems all stemmed from that.

Red never had responded well to boredom.

Boredom is one of humankind’s worst enemies. There are few things in the world that can drive a man - or woman - into doing things quite so cruel and terrible as the actions wrought by a person who is bored. An angry man is motivated by his rage, and will stop when it quelled. A honourable man is motivated by his duty, or perhaps his kindness, and will stop when it is fulfilled. A vengeful man will relent in his crusade for justice when his need for revenge is satisfied. But a bored man… he will continue until he is sufficiently entertained. The only issue with this is that when he stops, he will need something to fill his newfound time, lest he become bored again.

Or she. Reddington had seen too many a violent and cunning woman to count half of the population out of his thesis.

Regardless, the DMV is a petri dish of festering boredom on the scale of nothing seen elsewhere. Even classrooms have a mediocrity of entertainment, from laughing at teachers, giggling with friends or staring out of windows to dream up tantalising thoughts of freedom. The DMV, unfortunately, has none of that.

The few windows are too high to see through, and generally, unless you were a teenager there to pick up your first permit with a parent, you were there alone. With no friends to giggle with and no teacher to laugh at, the possibilities are rather stunted.

But the worst thing about the DMV… oh, the worst thing, is the hope. Any good villain in any story knows that hope is how blows are struck. Hope is the little nick on the end of a finger, just waiting to become infected with disappointment and crushing bleakness until it consumes the rest of the life from the poor, hapless soul.

Perhaps that is a tad dramatic. But the point about hope still stands, for while there is hope, people always have something to look forward to. The largest symbol of hope in the DMV is, of course, the numbers. The bright, shining numbers cascading red light down on the people like a beacon, leading the way forward. The fact that the numbers were ever changing, ever counting up gave the people the knowledge that they would eventually be called. The hope that they would get out. And with that came the peace of mind to sit and wait.

Red never had been one for waiting.

Every time Red had come to the DMV, he had always arrived in the same manner. Pulling up in his car, marching straight through the automatic doors and strolling towards Glen’s office, Dembe just a step behind. Every time, he had been greeted with the same response.

“Go back out, and take a number.”

One of these days he was just going to throw himself in front of that desk and demand to be listened to. But Glen was too valuable an asset to anger like that, and the bastard knew it. So for now, Red would sit. And he would wait. No matter how much he despised it.

Sitting in the DMV sometimes reminded Red of watching a pen of young puppies at a breeder. He’d gone once - not for a dog, but for information, of course. The breeder had been a key witness in a court case gone astray, and he’d wanted a word. None of that was relevant any more, but the image of the young puppies scurrying around in the pen would never quite leave his mind.

There seemed to be a few different groups. Some of them were content to lie on the ground, fiddling with their paws or some such, their own bodies all they needed to remain occupied. Others were playing with balls or toys, messing about with objects to keep themselves entertained. But there were a few - not many, but a few - that had to take one step further. They had to search, to see what was out there, to perhaps find some kind of adventure.

They, Red noticed, were the ones that would be first to get to the food.

And indeed, that was exactly what was happening here.

In the corner of the waiting room, away from the numbers every person’s eyes were constantly drawn to, were three large vending machines. They seemed old, and not just due to the layer of dust and grime; they were bulky and rectangular, much less flashy than the sleek machines littering train stations and college campuses these days.

The few people that were not fiddling with their thumbs or messing around with their phones were the first to notice, at least in the time that Red had been waiting. A middle aged man who had been casting his eyes all over the place headed up first, pulling a couple of dollar bills from his pocket as he went. He paused in front of the first machine, scratched his head, and pressed a couple of buttons. It was at that moment that Red knew something was wrong. He’d been a kid once, and he knew the awkward cringing that always occurred after pressing the buttons on a vending machine late at night or in a silent hallway; those beeps were startling enough to wake the dead. But despite the din of the waiting room, he didn’t hear anything as the man jammed his finger against the keypad.

Red leaned forward on his seat, causing Dembe to look at him in surprise. But there was a possibility that something was about to happen in this dull place, and Red would be damned - well, more than he was already - if he let it pass by without gaining some sort of entertainment.

It was as the man began feeding his dollar bills into the machine that Red saw it. That pesky spark of hope in his gaze as he ran his eyes over the chocolate bars and chips behind the glass, hungry for something different to do as much as he was for the food itself.

Watching carefully, Red could pinpoint exactly the moment that the man’s blissful dream broke and the reality of the place came rushing back.

Pandora had the right idea. Even after letting all the terrible nightmares imaginable into the world, she still had the sense to make sure Hope remained contained in the box.

First of all, the man waited with his gaze on the prize, waiting for the metal spiral to swirl and unshackle his brief release from the tedium. But after several seconds had passed, the expectant expression was replaced with a frown.

He tried knocking on the glass once. Twice. Three times. Progressively knocking harder and with more desperation with each try. When nothing yielded results the poor man tried to reach up through the flap at the bottom, but just as many had found before him, vending machines were designed to be unbreachable by a mere single elbowed human arm.

That was the point at which he called in reinforcements. Two other men, just as bored as any, jumped up at the first gesture, willing to try anything other than sitting. Together the three men tried to break the glass, seemingly heedless of the fact that they were currently engaging in destruction of property. For a moment Red found himself in awe of their determination, but he was quickly reminded of the situation as a red number flickered on the wall above his head. These men were bored; the vending machine offered a moment of respite. The thought of prosecution didn’t even enter their mind compared to that.

But determination or not, the glass did not break.

After this, the two men who had come to help the first moved to the remaining vending machines and each pulled out a few dollars. It was not totally clear why they hadn’t done this in the first place, though Red would wager that they probably thought that if one machine were broken, the others would be too.

The hypothesis ended up being correct, if the angry, unintelligible curses were anything to go by.

Now that all three of the men had lost money, they attacked the first vending machine with renewed vigour. They kicked and hit, they pushed and shoved, but nothing seemed to get through the glass. One of the men even shooed a little girl off her chair in an attempt to create a battering ram, but that plan was shot when it was discovered all the chairs were attached to each other. There really wasn’t any way to pick one up.

Meanwhile the little girl didn’t seem very keen to sit back on her chair. She was perhaps four years old, small and dainty with messy blonde pigtails and wearing what appeared to be a nightdress emblazoned with a strangely shaped snowman and a grinning reindeer. She was clutching a small blue elephant. Her mother didn’t appear to be paying the girl much attention; she was staring down at a Kindle and appeared very engrossed in it, only looking away for the cursory glances up at the numbers.

The girl had previously been playing with the elephant, so the mother probably hadn’t any reason to worry about her trying something else. But with the activity occurring only a few meters away from her seat, the elephant was relegated to a light grip on it's trunk as she padded over to the vending machines.

He wasn’t too far from the action and if he listened closely, Red could hear her soft giggles as she glanced into the machine, looking at the candy and chips.

“That one’s my favourite, Ellie, the pink one.” She pointed with a small finger, pressing the tip against the grubby glass as she held the elephant up in her other hand. “But I like this one too. All of them are yummy, but Mommy says they’re bad for my teeth.”

She continued to narrate the inside of the machine to her toy, giggling softly and trailing her fingers across the glass, immersed in her own little world. The men, meanwhile, had just finished up a discussion. They decided that since they could not break the glass, they would try to get into the machine from a different angle.

Red leaned forward again, the implications of what the men were about to do rushing through his mind like wildfire. He could see it happening in his mind’s eye seconds before it occurred in real life. The men, too immersed in their task to consider the small girl at the front of the machine. The mother, too immersed in her book to wonder where her child had wandered to. The child, too immersed her storytelling to understand why the machine in front of her had started to move.

All three of the men were along the left hand side of the machine, as the right was against the one beside it. They were pushing and pulling at the metal, trying to get it away from the wall. The exertion had them all staring at the ground as they pushed, and not a one noticed the little girl or heard her chattering. They were all focused on the one task.

The vending machines were old. Clunky. Heavy. _Unbalanced_. Safety yesterday never was as much as a consideration as it is today, and today it is not as important as it will be tomorrow. Safety is becoming more and more paramount in manufacturing as time goes by, and as such the large, rectangular hunks of heavy metal that looked like they had been standing in the DMV since the 90s most certainly did not meet current day safety requirements. 

They say vending machines kill more people than sharks every year. They also say it doesn’t really mean anything if you’re the one fighting off the man eating fish. On the flip-side, the fact itself seems entirely ridiculous until you’re watching a vending machine topple over.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The men even counted down, as if they were voicing some sick doomsday clock, recording the time left before Atropos sliced through the fragile girl with her shears. When they reached zero, the three of them gave one fateful heave and pushed the vending machine in unison. The unbalanced contraption tipped forward slightly, and balanced on its front corner. Red jerked forward, then paused as the men realised it was going to fall. They lurched forward themselves, grabbing at corners and scrabbling for non existent handholds, yelling and shouting. The huge death trap teetered for a moment, before falling back against the wall.

Red relaxed, sliding back into his chair. But it would seem he calmed too soon, for the men were still fumbling from their shock and sudden move forward. Only a second had passed since the initial push when one of the men, a little slower than the other two, fell into his comrades and shoved them up against the side of the vending machine.

And that was all it took. The machine was falling forward once more, leaning onto its edge before teetering forward even further than it had before. The little girl was frozen, staring up at the plummeting tower of metal with wide, frightened eyes.

Alerted by the earlier shouting, almost the entire waiting room was watching by now, their eyes unable to leave the terrifying scene. The horrified gasps seemed to lengthen time, and the machine seemed topple ever so slowly. Red felt a movement beside him but flinched as the girl’s mother let out a harrowing scream that echoed through the room, seeming to pierce through Red’s very body.

He had seen in his mind’s eye what was going to happen. He’d seen things much worse than this before. Hell, he’d had worse things happen to him - he didn’t even have enough fingers to count the number of near death experiences he’d had in the last half-decade alone. Perhaps if you included toes, he could count the number of times someone had taken a knife or a gun to him. They say there are few things worse than physical torture, but nothing, _nothing_ , compares to watching the death of a child and being completely unable to do a single thing to stop it.

Two of the men were again trying to grapple with the falling machine, but to no end. It was falling; it was an unstoppable force. Anything getting in its way was going to be crushed, and the little girl… there would be nothing left.

The machine hit the ground with a crash, glass finally shattering, concrete below linoleum cracking, metal buckling. The sound reverberated through the room, echoing with a sense of finality. It was over.

Time seemed to return to normal as the echoes finally quieted. But the waiting room was far from silent; Red could hear whimpering and gasping, the sounds of human suffering even though they were all exactly as they had been a minute before. But they had all watched something horrific; they had almost witnessed the ending of a life, something that so many people are lucky enough to never have to deal with.

The girl’s mother was the loudest. She had thrown the Kindle to the side and leapt out of her seat. She rushed straight past the vending machine and over to where Dembe was pulling himself off the ground. The woman clutched at her daughter, sobbing with relief.

“It’s alright,” Dembe was saying, trying his best to calm the hysteric woman. “She’s fine. A little bruised perhaps, but she will be fine.”

Red stood and dusted off his clothes before moving over, gesturing for the others to stay in their seats and glaring at anyone who dared to get up. The last thing the poor woman needed now was to be swarmed with well-wishers.

As he approached, Red could hear the mother muttering prayers and thanks and nonsensical words of comfort to her daughter. The little girl, as Dembe had said, was completely fine. She was staring at the fallen machine, though not in horror as Red would have expected. Rather, she seemed angry.

“It killed Ellie,” she was saying, her brows furrowing in fury. “The candy-machine killed Ellie.”

Sure enough, a second glance showed a tattered blue tail sticking out from under the wreckage. There was no way of retrieving it.

Dembe, bless his soul, kneeled down in front of the little girl as best he could with the mother latched on to her. He gave her a careful look, kinder than anything Red had seen him give to anyone other than his small family.

“I am very sorry about Ellie,” he said quietly. “But she protected you. She was a very good friend, don’t you think?”

The child’s expression softened, and she nodded. “The best.”

Dembe gave her a smile and stood, turning to face Red.

“Well, thank goodness you’re still young,” Red said, smirking as Dembe raised an eyebrow in response. “I never could have moved quite that fast.”

Dembe didn’t reply. Instead, he rolled his eyes and moved towards the three men responsible, giving them a glare that could have made another vending machine topple over in fear. As it were, the men visibly began to quiver.

Red, for his part, pulled out some paper and pen before whipping up some ‘Out of Order’ notices. They would be more effective than any ‘Danger’ signs - people wouldn’t go anywhere near any type of machine with a perchance for eating money, even if it were the only source of entertainment in a DMV waiting room.

That done, Red returned to his seat. Slowly, the waiting room returned to normal. The woman dragged her little girl out, muttering about doctors and strongly worded emails. Red wished her luck, but doubted her attempts at justice would be fruitful.

The men returned to their seats, keeping their eyes on their hands and probably fervently hoping that everyone would just forget that their attempt at alleviating the boredom almost resulted in the death of a child. Red, on the other hand, decided he’d had enough. He’d sat. He’d waited. The numbers had changed several times in last minute or so, but either no one had noticed or they were too shocked to go to their appointment. So rather than retaking his seat, Red turned on his heel and strolled right into Glen’s office.

Glen greeted him in the usual fashion. “Please tell me you didn’t kill them all.”

Red gave him a hard stare. “Why on earth would I do that?”

“I heard a scream.” Glen shrugged. “Didn’t seem too outside the ballpark. So?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Red replied, taking a seat and fixing him with a glare. “However, one of the vending machines did try to exterminate a small child.”

Glen blinked. Then he took off his glasses and rubbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “Ah, damn,” he muttered. “That’s the fourth one this week, you know? We can’t afford this sort of drama.”

“I’m sure the mother of the four year old girl that almost got _flattened_ will be very grateful to hear that you’ll be replacing the vending machines to save only your reputation,” Red said firmly.

“Whoa, hold up.” Glen frowned. “We can’t get new vending machines, didn’t you just hear me? We can’t afford it.”

“Then why not get rid of the old ones?” Red demanded, ignoring the fact that he knew very well that hadn’t been what Glen had meant the first time he’d mentioned the word ‘afford’.

“I never thought you were so preoccupied with work place safety,” Glen said, narrowing his eyes. “Are you here for something other than to harass me, Red? Because if that’s all, I have other people to see.”

Red gritted his teeth, but once again he was stuck in the loop of knowing that Glen knew that he was too valuable to make angry. He detailed what he needed, and upon receiving instructions to come back the next day Red stood to leave.

But as he opened the door, the sight of the broken vending machine lying on its belly gave him pause. He turned back to look at Glen, fixing him with his most stony gaze.

“I won’t be sitting in line again,” he stated. “The next time I come, I’ll be heading straight to your office. You may be able to avoid the drama of everything but steamrolled children in your little box, but I can’t deal with the… stress of that waiting room.”

“Hey, you can’t just-“

“Thank you, Glen.” Red gave a sarcastic grin. “I always so enjoy our chats.”

He left the portly man stuttering irritably and headed out, straightening his tie and gesturing for Dembe to follow him. He had some work to do. 

X

The DMV had not changed much by the next day. Several of the people waiting noticed the dent in the floor next to the vending machines, but few considered it worthy of comment.

If one looked closely, they might notice that the vending machines themselves were shiny and new, the models sleek, perfectly balanced, and most certainly up to the most current safety codes. It would take much more than a shove to knock one of those babies over.

As Red marched through those automatic doors, he spied a man walk up to the first machine on the left. He fed the machine a couple of dollars, took the packet of chips that it spat out and calmly walked to his seat. The man had no idea of the magnitude of his simple action; he had no idea that a small girl had almost lost her life at the exact spot he had been standing.

Red couldn’t help but smirk.

Shaking his head in amusement, he strolled straight into Glen’s office without knocking, taking a seat in front of the desk. As always, Red’s timing was impeccable. Glen was half way through a sandwich - rather literally. He lowered the roll he just bitten and glared at Red in annoyance, hastily wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

His words were entirely predictable and quite satisfying. “You need to go back out and take a number.”

Red chuckled, causing Glen’s brow to furrow in confusion. “Oh, I don’t think so. I won’t be waiting out there ever again.”

“My arse you will,” Glen groused. “You don’t wait, you don’t get your information. I don’t want people to be getting suspicious.”

“No one out there is here often enough to make a connection,” Red replied cheerfully. “Besides; I think I solved a problem for you. The least you could do is show a little gratitude.”

“Fine.” Glen pulled a yellow envelope from his desk and thrust it at Red, sending a couple of crumbs on the journey at the same time. “Take it. But don’t be expecting anything else, you hear me? This is your gratitude. I’ll let you have it this once, but next time - god forbid, if there’s a next time - you’ll be taking a place in that queue, and you won’t come in here until your number flashes on that board, you hear me? No more preferential treatment.”

Red was about to respond, but something in Glen’s wording caught a snag in his mind. _Taking a place_. Well, there was more than one way to do that. He smiled and held out his hand. Glen stared at it like he was afraid it would bite him, but after a couple of seconds he shook it.

“What are you up to?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at Reddington. “You don’t give up that easy.”

“Oh, you know how it is, Glen,” said Red, standing and adjusting his coat. “You provide me with important information. As such, I value our friendship.”

This only served to make Glen more suspicious, and Red’s eyes sparkled with amusement. He knew exactly what he was doing to Glen, and he loved it.

“You won’t be waiting in line next time, will you?” Dembe asked as he pulled them out of the parking lot.

Red chuckled, but didn’t respond. There wasn’t much point; Dembe would find out, and besides, he knew Red well enough to know that when he said something, he meant it. And why should he wait in the DMV when there were plenty of others who could do it so much better?

After all, Red never responded well to boredom.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: imagery associated with the near death of a child. She doesn't actually die though.


End file.
